Why Unmarried Women Are the Key to 2014

Last week, Washington discovered unmarried women. As pollsters who have been studying this group of voters for years, we say: Welcome to the party. Admittedly, it’s an unusual way to slice the American electorate. After all, it’s not like widows, divorcées and single women in their 20s think of themselves as a group, as a unique voting bloc or even call themselves “unmarried women.” They are more likely to call themselves “working women.”

But marital status is one of the strongest predictors of whether a person will vote and for which party, which is why so many progressives and Democrats are paying attention now.

A majority of American households are now unmarried, and nearly a quarter of the presidential-year electorate were unmarried women. But marriage is now politicized too. Nearly 60 percent of those who call themselves Republicans are married and three-quarters of the conservative Republican base are married. By contrast, two-thirds of unmarried women voted for Barack Obama and Democrats for Congress in 2012; two-thirds voted for Terry McAuliffe for Virginia governor in 2013.

But if you want to know why unmarried women are now the focus, it is not because they are assuredly Democrats, or even assuredly voters. In an off-year election, and when so many are struggling economically, unmarried women are no guarantee at the polls.

In Virginia, unmarried women voted heavily Democratic, but their modest turnout took their vote share down from 4 years earlier in the state elections. In our most recent national survey, just two-thirds of unmarried women who voted in 2012 said they were almost certain to vote in November, and 10.5 million unmarried women who voted in 2012 are project to stay home in November.

And in our latest poll done for NPR – conducted jointly by Democracy Corps and Resurgent Republic – the Democrats were ahead by 1 point in the generic congressional ballot (44 to 43 percent), but unmarried women gave Democrats 58 percent of their votes. That sounds high, but it is nearly 10 points below what we would see in a presidential-year election, suggesting that Democrats have some work to do.

So, if you are a Democrat and want to change your electoral fortunes in November, unmarried women are the biggest and best opportunity. Right now, these are votes on the table—pity the Democrat who would leave them there in November.

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What unmarried women (widows, never-marrieds and divorcées) share—and what makes them lean so heavily for Democrats—is being on their own, vulnerable economically, at a time when jobs that pay enough to live on are very scarce. That is the main finding of the research we have conducted over the last couple of years. For most Americans, the economy is a challenge every day. It’s a challenge at the grocery store, the day care and the gas pump. It’s a challenge to pay rent, afford education or take time off for work to care for sick children. In focus groups our participants tell us that jobs don’t pay enough anymore so they have multiple jobs to make up the difference. Or they save money by sharing intergenerational housing (i.e. living with their parents, a trend that became increasingly uncommon through the twentieth century and now has become much more common again). They make big cuts at the grocery store. They postpone retirement—or work in post-retirement jobs. And for the 25 percent of unmarried women with children under 18 living at home—the median income is just $23,000 and 82 percent do not have a college degree – the economy is particularly tough. They are pretty sure that women get less pay than men and face huge obstacles getting ahead.

You might assume that unmarried women are the main target for Democrats in 2014 because they are pro-choice, pro-birth control and pro-women’s health. While it’s true—these women are pro-choice—our research shows that what motivates them to vote are economic issues, particularly those that affect working women and mothers. In Virginia, much of the Democrats’ advertising was focused on abortion and contraception and no doubt increased Democratic support, but it did not raise turnout among unmarried women.

Stanley Greenberg has served as polling adviser to presidents and prime ministers, CEOs and dozens of campaigns in the United States and around the world. He is co-founder, with James Carville, of Democracy Corps and the author most recently of It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!

Erica Seifert is senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, where she is the lead analyst for Democracy Corps. She is most recently the author of The Politics of Authenticity in Presidential Campaigns, a history of recent U.S. political culture, American self-representation and political media.